They’ve turned me into pure, primal rage. In this sweltering pitch-black holding cell, I only have my memories, and even those are starting to fade. I remember a fragmented moment of me standing amongst the crops, not yet time for harvest. The buzzing of pests out in the acres beyond. A cloudless sky where mage-engineered cargo ships flew large crates of produce and products. Then I looked down the hillside to see horses and carriages approaching from the road, sending an updraft of red earth in their wake. Crimson banners with a giant “JF” flew high via black drones. The Jacin-Fleu ravages found our chunk of peaceful land to pillage. I sprinted from the fields to the house, smashing through the front door to hide my wife and daughter. Yet, inside, the intruders were already there. Clad in rusted, greasy armor, beards and hair as disheveled as that of a wild beast. Two of them held my wife and daughter at knifepoint. “You wasted your breath, farmer,” one said. “Can’t outrun our teleporter mage-tech.” “Get away from my family!” I screamed, fighting and subduing several of them. “Calm yourself,” the one holding my wife captive said. “Why don’t you stop beating my men before I grip this knife a wee bit tighter?” But I couldn’t stop. I roared, grabbing one of the men trying to hold me down onto the kitchen table and backhanded him so hard that he flew across the kitchen. “Stop. They’ll just kill you!” my wife said. “Oh no, we won’t kill him,” the one holding my daughter captive said with a snake-like voice. “We gots a fighter here, boys. I say we sell him to the monster-makers.” They all howled in laughter as one of them blew a purple powder in my face and I fell into darkness. My memories shatter as the roaring of the crowds above rumble down to us in the chamber levels. The howls and cries of those in the other cells reverberate. I feel my heart’s pace quicken, my anger rising. I stand up, my legs scraping against the cement floor. “Who’s next?” I hear Murgush,The Bone Decimator says a few cells away. “There’s no rhyme or reason to who they pick. We’re just props for their entertainment,” Histhera, The Blood Boiler says. Double doors open on the other side of the chamber, a slit of harsh light spills inward. “Drentick! Time to shine!” Hurj the guard says my combatant name. I had long ago forgotten my real one. A pulse of fear ripples through me, yet I drown it with conviction and rage and purpose. “Eye Gouger! Eye Gouger!” My fellow combatants chant and my title, earned after my particularly bloody first battle. I was still acclimating to my horns. I didn’t know just how much damage they could do. How much damage I could do. Hurj walks up to me and grins. “You know,” he says. “Word is, that this fighter might know where the Jacin-Fleu took your family.” My blackened eyes widen and I growl deeply. He cracks up in laughter. “That’s my boy. See if you can get the information out of him!” My mind goes back to waking up in one of the Jacin-Fleu carriages. I was bloody, shackled and chained. I remember looking up at a twisted looking older man with sunken eyes and a muddied apron. In the coming days, I’d learn to hate him above all others. “You’re quite the specimen,” he said. I pounced at him until the chains that held me back went taught. “Where’s my family?” I screamed. He looked perplexed for a moment, but then began to nod. Then, he grinned. “How much do you love your family, man?” he said in a low tone. I paid no mind to his question. I only tried to throttle him. My anger was blinding me. It had a tendency to do that. “I’d say, with that anger and rage you have, that you’d be willing to do almost anything to be reunited with them. Is that true?” “Where are they?” I shouted, already losing breath. “We’re going to a place where there are people that know. The people you meet and, well, fight, will know where your family is. It’s up to you to get it out of them.” I didn’t say anything. Everything this man said sounded like a lie. “But, here’s the thing. They’re only accepting combatants of the most bestial kind. That’s where a man like me and some exceptional mage-tech step in.” Guards grunt as they heave the heavy chains that connect to my neck shackle. I buck with the pent up anger and aggression that’s spilling out of me. It’s more than just my outrage of this situation. A primal growl swirls within me like a trapped animal. They lead me through a widening corridor, the chanting of the crowd turning into thunder. I want to devour every one of them. “Our newcomer to the arena has his work cut out for him! Ladies and gentlemen, prepare for Grentick the Eye Gouger!” “Alright, let’s do this,” one of the guards says, sighing. Then one shocks me with something I don’t see, a jolt of pain rattles through my massive body. I let out a deep, guttural roar. “Oh, ho! Sounds like Grentick is hungry!” the announcer says, and the crowd booms once again. The gates swing open and the anger that’s now boiling over from the shock causes me to charge into the arena. The sun beams down onto the sandy ground where shards of armor and bone lay scattered. Above me, spectators sit in hovering seats that tower above the arena’s battleground. Behind me floats a mage-tech-powered widescreen that streams my entry. It broadcasts my gray, bull-like body heaving as I roar. My blood-stained horns sway. My oversized tiger-like paws pace back and forth. My armored armadillo-like shell is already steaming from the heat. About thirty feet away stands a single man in leather armor. He’s holding a short sword and a small wooden shield, and he looks like he’s about to faint from fright. Is this the man that knows where my family has been relocated? That’s what they keep telling me. These fighters are the ones in my way, apparently. “Where is my family?” I say. Yet he doesn’t seem to hear me because he has no reaction. “Where are they?” I yell louder. He hears me this time, but must not understand me, because his only reaction is to shake worse. The crowd cheers again. “Shut up!” I yell, looking up at them. “Grentick’s always been known to hype up a crowd with his roaring! Let’s give him a round of applause!” the announcer says. “No, no. Shut up! I have to ask this man some questions!” I say, but it only riles them up more. The fighter lets the crowd get to him. He’s starting to hyperventilate. “Where is my family?” I say lower to try and cut out the crowd. Still, the fighter can’t understand me. He begins to grit his teeth and raise his sword. “Come on!” He shouts at me. “I need this!” I echo my question and run toward him. He strikes my plated back with his sword, a piercing pain rippling into me. I roar once more and paw at him, knocking him onto the ground. The crowd roars. “Stop cheering!” I scream. My claws had landed on his right arm and now, blood trickles down in a steady stream. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I say. “They say you know where my family is. Where are they?” “I don’t want to hurt you,” he says. It was the first time any of them had ever said anything of the like to me. I think back to the countless others to which I’ve asked the whereabouts of my family. So many deaths. So many unanswered questions. I think back to when the monster-makers transformed me with their deranged magic. The all-encompassing pain of turning into this beast. In my endeavors, in my anger, my humanity fell to achieve my justice. Since then, I had lost count of the years, lost count of the bodies. Sometimes, most times, I lost why exactly I was so angry. This fighter stands up. “Don’t you understand?” He nearly cries. “I need to win this! They need me! If I get free, I can find them!” I stop my charge, then. I look at him and see that somehow, he has the same yearning, the same desperation to help someone out there, beyond the arena. That’s when I follow some force I cannot see. I look up, and through the sun-pierced clouds, I see my wife and daughter dancing in the sky. It’s something I’ve never seen before. If I could still cry, I’d flood the whole world. I know that the anger had clouded my vision, my judgement, my path. I see the truth finally. No one here ever knew where they were. They were gone the day the Jacin-Fleu came. I sigh, fake a roar and a side step, and I expose my underside, allowing the fighter to strike. A white hot blaze pierces me. “Unbelievable!” The announcer says. “I’m so sorry,” the fighter says, driving his blade further. I feel his sorrow, his anguish, but there’s a blossom of hope in him, and it’s enough. My massive body had seen enough, too. An overdose of rage has consumed me. Brutal rage has weakened my soul. But there’s something else, now. Perhaps, even completion.